Reconnecting with Iran: My article in Pragati

India’s independence on foreign policy has taken a beating during the last five years of UPA rule. For the sake of a nuclear deal that now, ironically, sits in the new US administration’s cold storage, the UPA sacrificed India’s reputation in the congress of developing nations by voting against Iran — not once, but twice — at the IAEA. I make the case for reversing the current trajectory of our relationship with this important Islamic republic in this month’s Pragati .

… India’s engagements with the United States, and increasingly with Israel, amidst Iran’s growing isolation post-9/11, affected the ability of the two countries to collaborate on areas of mutual interest, including energy security and stemming the growth of Sunni extremism in the region. During this period, two events effectively put paid to the momentum gained by the New Delhi Declaration – India’s voting against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005 and India’s launching of the Israeli reconnaissance satellite TecSAR (“Polaris”) in 2008.

The UPA’s naiveté with regard to relations with Iran will come back to haunt the nation. India’s voting against Iran at the IAEA was perhaps the biggest strategic foreign policy blunder since the turn of the millennium. It was less a reflection of India’s conviction against nuclear proliferation and more an evidence of America’s coerciveness, effectively tying the Indo-US nuclear deal to India’s vote.